Shuttered
by Blue Shadowdancer
Summary: Not all accidents are how they appear. A woman is dead, and the team have to find who killed her, and why, before more lives are in danger... Mac&Stella, DL, Flack&Angell, Adam - - - Currently on HIATUS
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Welcome to my latest story! Involving a case, hopefully suspense, can't guarantee it'll be free from peril. Thanks to lily moonlight for the read-through, and suggestions. Reviews always hoped for, and will be replied to! :)  
**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the CSI characters.**

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Early morning rush hour. The sidewalks swarmed with people, each face indistinguishable in a sea of faces, while cars fought with yellow cabs for dominance of the roads.

The queue inside one of the myriad coffee shops seemed to stretch on forever. Jostled by an even more impatient customer from behind her, Stella checked her watch for what felt like the tenth time, to find that the second hand was ticking away much faster than she would have liked, time speeding up to match the frenetic pace of everyone around her, apart from the ones making it their objective to slow her down. Her foot tapped against the tiled floor as the old lady currently being served began to sift though a pile of change that was comprised mostly of cents to count out the price of her cup of tea.

Finally, her turn. The flustered girl behind the till looked up, greeting her by rote. "Good morning, ma'am, what can I get you today?" she asked, heart clearly not in the cheerfulness of the words.

"Medium white coffee, no sugar."

"Three dollars," the girl said, not needing to check the tariff. She punched details into the cash register, blonde hair coming askew from her ponytail, plastered-on smile contrasting with her flushed cheeks and the shadows under her eyes. Stella noticed her surreptiously checking her watch, and guessed that she had been on the night shift, now longing to go home and get some sleep. "It'll just be a minute, if you'll wait along there."

Standing now tapping her fingers on the wooden counter, Stella once again read the time, from the clock on the opposite wall, aware that she was probably going to be late for work. Not that it would matter too much if she was, but, as one who became easily irritated when forced to wait needlessly for others, she hated not being on time herself.

A cardboard cup with a corrugated sleeve was finally slid in front of her without a word, the man who had served it immediately turning to the next order. Stella took it and pushed her way through the small shop, holding the cup above the press of bodies, and out onto the street. She checked her watch once more and decided to risk walking the rest of the way to the labs anyway, rather than go by subway or take a cab. Her mood lifted as she passed the bright colours spilling from flower shops, clothing shops, fruit stalls, as shutters were lifted and doors hooked open.

She always enjoyed the feeling of walking the streets as the city began to come alive around her. People in business suits emerged from doorways and subway exits bleary-eyed, and joined queues spilling from yet another coffee shop. The air was full of noise, car and cab horns hooted impatiently as they ploughed through the clogged roads, overtaking, being overtaken, swerving to avoid each other, braking reluctantly at red lights while a river of pedestrians surged through the sudden gap formed by the parting of the sea of traffic.

It would be a beautiful day later. The sun, although in the sky for some hours, had yet to clear the tops of the skyscrapers to illuminate the ant maze at ground level. For now, the tall buildings resembled candles on their east-facing sides, with the top storeys flamed and bright, the wick of the lower levels still dull and grey as she looked up, past the buildings, at the pale blue of the sky. Soon it would be summer in more than just word, and the streets would swarm with tourists. More murders, more potential suspects.

Yet again, Stella checked her watch, and increased her pace. She remembered the coffee she was still holding and had to slow her pace for a second to take a sip, but as she was raising the cup to her mouth for the second time, a black-suited man with matching briefcase and shoes shoved past her, knocking the cup out of her hand, and she swore as it hit the sidewalk, plastic lid snapping off to spill its contents in a steaming puddle. She shot a death glare at the retreating figure, who didn't look round as he barged past other slower-moving pedestrians, which was probably in his best interests.

The smells emanating from yet another ubiquitous Starbucks tempted her, but she looked at the queue and sighed. The coffee machine in the break room would work. Should work. Well, it had _better_ be working, because she didn't want to face a whole day without a dose of caffeine to wake her up. _Should have left earlier_, she told herself, as she had told herself on many mornings before now. Particularly on Mondays. Working the week round in shifts should in theory mean that the working week didn't start on any particular day, but for some reason Monday mornings still felt exactly like Monday mornings, even if the day following was scheduled for her day off. Which, this week, it wasn't.

Her steps were forced to slow as her way was partly blocked by a crowd gathered around a busker, a college-age student propped against a wall and playing a tune on a flute, one that she felt she ought to know, but couldn't quite pin down. Somehow it caught at her feet, tugging her footsteps into a rhythm and lightening her mood as she shouldered her way through, wishing she had time to stop and listen. But she didn't, and she continued.

Checking her watch again, Stella sighed, and resigned herself to giving up on her walk. There just wasn't enough time for it, and so she headed instead to where a subway entrance beckoned, joining the flow of people pouring into it and cascading down the steps. Reaching the platform, she was in time to see the red tail-lights of the train she had just missed disappear around the first bend in the tunnel, the echoes of the engine's roar muffled, and resigned herself to waiting for the next as speakers fixed high on the walls reminded her that unattended luggage would be removed without warning.

The momentary clear space in front of a coffee vendor selling at the back of the platform tempted her into buying a second cup of the day, and she sipped it as she waited, eyes idly scanning the crowd, rather than wasting time on the empty rail tracks and boards of adverts opposite. More people flowed down the steps, waiting to be carried away on trains to other identical stations. She wondered where they were all going, and if she would ever happen to see any of them again, and that trail of thought slid her into her standard game for when she was just waiting for something.

_Guess the crime_. It was a rather childish way to pass the time, especially for a trained criminalist, but she had a sneaking suspicion that all the cops she knew played it sometimes, without admitting it. _Except Mac, of course,_ she thought, and a smile quirked onto her lips as she stared blandly with no eye contact at the thickset man in the suit and trilby hat, who only needed a cigar to become an old mobster boss, the haughty blonde with improbably high heels and even more improbably defined features who had murdered three husbands by serving them poisoned cocktails, the thin, pinched man with dark clothes and slightly shaded glasses who was clearly an assassin for one of the various secret services.

Her attention was suddenly drawn to a woman who was shoving her way through the growing press of people, face scrunched up in an expression of almost panicked urgency. She had an arm bent out in front of her, elbow foremost, and kept shooting glances feverishly over her shoulder. Her brown purse was clutched tight against her chest, with the strap looped over her shoulder. The glances behind her were snatched as if she couldn't help looking – as if she was being hunted. Stella stared in the same direction, but could see nothing unusual, no one who looked any more out of place than anyone else, nothing obvious that was inspiring this much panic, but something was clearly wrong. She began to move towards her, aiming to cut her off, pushing gently through the crowd with muttered apologies as they moved aside reluctantly.

The woman reached the edge of the platform and stood as far forward as she could, toes of her flat shoes sticking out over the rim, above the tracks, bobbing slightly on the balls of her feet. Her hand twisted tightly into the dark waves of her shoulder-length hair, and her head turned back and forth as she alternated between snatching wide-eyed glances behind her, and staring anxiously into the tunnel to the right, as if willing the train to arrive faster.

She had attracted attention from other people in the crowd, but no one was helping her, no one was asking her what the matter was. They were giving her sideways glances, and those nearest were turning their heads away, unwilling to be caught staring. No one wanted to get involved. A second-hand memory flared up in Stella as she tried to push her way through – Mac confronting serial killer Henry Darius on a packed subway train, and nobody, not one single person, had bothered to look round, or had noticed that in the corner a man had had his throat cut…

She gave up on politeness and began elbowing people out of the way with one arm, the coffee in her other hand held against her body, copying the woman's method of crowd-cutting, and finally reached her from the side, joining her in the only clear space, the slight ledge between the rim of paving and the yellow line, the space that frequent painted letters on the floor warned should be kept clear. She pulled her badge from her belt and held it up. "I'm a police officer. Are you alright?"

The woman jumped and spun to face Stella, eyes suddenly wide, face drained of colour. But as the words and police badge registered, the tension drained from her body and her features seemed to collapse in relief. "Oh, thank God, thank God. Can you help me?"

"I'm sure I can," Stella told her calmly. "What's happening?"

The woman opened her mouth, shooting another glance behind her, Stella's eyes following hers but still unable to tell what or who she should be looking at. "I think – "

Whatever she had begun to say was lost as the dragon-roar of an approaching train began to rattle and rumble through the tunnel, reverberating through the air and against the curved walls, filling Stella's ears. As the fiery headlamps began to light the darkness around the bend, suddenly the packed crowd behind the two of them made a stumbling surge forwards, just at that point, pushing them forwards, so that Stella had to lean back against someone to prevent being knocked over, struggling to regain her balance and her footing.

The woman was on the very edge of the platform already. The sudden wave of movement took her seemingly by surprise and she rocked with the impact of bodies against her, tripped forwards and stepped onto a space that wasn't solid, hands windmilling for support that wasn't there –

Stella lunged forwards, grabbed for her pullover, her arm, her hair, anything, the coffee cup and her badge forgotten even before they had left her grip. She reached out, caught something solid within her hand, tried to pull it back but was dragged forwards into the emptiness below by the weight she held, the shriek of the fast-approaching, desperately braking train all that she could hear, screaming through her ears and maybe through her mouth as well, and then the tension in her arm was suddenly gone as the woman's purse slipped from her shoulder in betrayal of its owner, and the woman fell just as the unstoppably vast body of the train tore towards them and Stella desperately struggled for her own balance but she was falling forward anyway, unstoppably, as the horrified face of the driver gaped at her from behind the glass –

Her flailing arm was suddenly grabbed and tugged from behind so that her fall forwards was changed to a fall sideways, and she hit the concrete slabs, hard, without having time to put a hand out to break her fall, her centre of gravity still on the platform but only half her body, knees sticking out, concrete cold against a suddenly bare foot, outstretched arm hanging into nothingness and nearly touching the metal of the juddering train which had stopped but not fast enough, the cold concrete rim of the platform stamped painfully into her cheek, the purse still clutched tight in her fingers.

Someone was screaming, a thin blade of sound that ripped through the fabric of the air. It wasn't her. She hadn't breathed in yet.

More shrieks as more people realised what had happened. The shockwave rippled backwards through the crowd, people bending to hear as the news passed them, shoving each other, all anxious now to get back from the edge, to get away. The train doors remained closed.

Winded, all Stella could do was lie there, shaking, staring down at the iron wheel of the train and a segment of the gravel lining the track. The woman was gone. She hadn't been fast enough, and she was just – gone.

A shocked hush spread outwards.

A disembodied announcement echoed from the speakers. "Please mind the gap between the train and the platform edge. Please mind the gap…"


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: A couple of days later than I anticipated, but here's the second chapter. Thank you so much for all the reviews to the first part, and to the people who've added this to alerts or favourites - I'm hoping you'll continue to enjoy it. **

**Thanks to lily moonlight for the readthrough, and suggestions.**

* * *

Flack was the first to arrive. He ducked under the yellow tape cordoning off the platform, and hurried down the steps, away from the sullen crowd of people who were obviously the ones who hadn't thought to get away fast enough to avoid having to give statements. A couple uniformed officers seemed to be handling them, both of whom he could have recognised had he taken the time to do so, but he didn't.

Stella was sitting on one of the scuffed benches, leaning forward with her elbows resting on her knees, staring fixedly at a spot on the floor.

Slowing his pace and walking over, Flack sat down next to her. "Hi, Stell."

"Hi." She looked up.

He didn't bother asking if she was ok, or how she felt, knowing already what her response to those sort of questions would be. And knowing that, being Stella, she would want to focus on the professional for now. "You've got a real knack for finding trouble, you know."

"Good to see you too," she shot back, the ghost of a reluctant smile hovering for a second around her lips.

"How about you tell me what happened?" he asked. He'd heard the vague outline over the radio from the two responding officers, but wanted to know what she had to say.

Stella sat up properly, using both hands to push her hair away from her face, and took a deep breath. She had been running over events in her mind, already sorting them out into a coherent statement. "I'm not even sure, completely. The – the woman on the track. I think she was running from someone. She kept looking behind her, she looked really frightened. She was heading right to the edge of the platform, I went to meet her, thought that maybe I could help."

"Did you speak to her?" Flack asked. He was jotting down details in his notebook.

Stella nodded, her forehead creasing. "I told her I was a police officer, showed her my badge. She seemed – relieved, asked me to help her. I told her I would, and she started to say something, and then, well – " she shrugged helplessly.

"Ok, I need to know exactly what happened after that," he said, and she closed her eyes, trying to replay what exactly _had_ happened, at a speed slow enough to separate out each moment, as she related the surge of movement in the crowd, and how it had knocked the woman off the edge.

She paused as Mac appeared down the steps, nearly running in his urgency, case in hand. "Stella? Are you alright?" he asked as soon as he was within speaking distance.

She rolled her eyes at the concern in his voice. "I'm _fine_, Mac."

Mac met Flack's eyes over the top of her head, and Flack shrugged. "Mac, I'll fill you in properly in a minute. Stella, go on. You were saying it was only at that one place that the crowd pushed forwards?"

She nodded, as Mac took a seat next to her, and squeezed her hand briefly. "Yeah. It was really sudden. I think everyone leaned forwards and had to take a step to steady themselves. As if – " she opened her eyes, and they were clear, with a sudden comprehension. "Like at a gig, when someone shoves against someone for the hell of it, and it's like a mass of dominos, everyone falls forward a bit. You know what I mean?"

"_I_ do," Flack said. "Not so sure about Mac though, can't really see him going to watch bands."

"I saw the philharmonic orchestra at…" Mac began, and stopped as he saw the looks the other two were giving him. "You mean a different type of band."

Flack rolled his eyes. "Like I said. I don't reckon much crowd-control's needed at your classical or jazz places. "

"Don't pick on him," Stella instructed, holding back a smile at the look of confusion on Mac's face. "But I think that must be what happened."

"So this could have been a deliberate act, is that what you're saying?" Mac asked.

She nodded. "Well, it could still have been an accident, if someone tripped and knocked everyone forward a step. But she was definitely running from something, or someone, she was terrified."

Flack prompted her with a nod to finish her statement.

"So, anyway, the crowd surged forwards. She was right on the edge, and just overbalanced. I tried to catch her – I got hold of her purse instead. I put it there to mark the spot it happened, when everyone had moved away. It's over there." She pointed to where she'd placed it carefully, on the concrete, partly overlapping the yellow safety line. "She fell right in front of the train. Didn't have a chance. Someone pulled me back, or I'd probably have gone over the edge too. I don't know who it was. When I got up, everyone was trying to get as far away as possible."

Her hand moved up to brush against her cheek, where the division between safety and death for her was imprinted in the light purplish bruise that was already forming, a straight shadowed line.

"Someone called 911," Flack interjected. "Said there'd been an accident. They'd heard Stella identify herself as a police officer and told the operator so, which is why something was lost in communication and the code for 'officer involved incident' went out."

"Yes, that's the code I got paged with," Mac said.

"Which, I'm guessing, is the reason you came down here in such a rush to save the damsel in distress?" Stella asked. Colour had returned to her face, the shock of the incident quickly wearing off.

"Something like that," Mac admitted sheepishly. He looked at Flack. "Witness statements?"

"Only just got here, Mac. I'll go and see what's happening." He strode purposefully away, as both Stella and Mac stood up.

"There's probably ID in the purse," she said, as he led the way over to crouch down next to it. "I don't have any gloves with me, so I didn't open it."

Mac opened his case, removing a pair of gloves. Pulling them on, he undid the clasp, sliding out a wallet and opening it, to reveal a driving licence. "Grace Ellison," he read. "Thirty-two years old." He stood up, walked the short distance to the edge of the platform, looked down.

She joined him, swallowing. Grace must have hit the front of the moving train and been thrown clear to the other side of the tracks. Her body was pummelled, limbs askew, a pool of blood staining the gravel around her head, which was tipped back at an unnatural angle, her face staring up at them unblinkingly. Stella turned away, but was left with the lingering sensation that Grace was looking into her eyes, silently asking, _Why didn't you save me?_

"I'll take the body and this scene," Mac said, cutting into her thoughts. "Call Danny and go to the address on the driver's licence, there might be some clues to who or what she was running from." He met Stella's eyes. "Before you say anything, I know perfectly well that you could handle this, but I don't want you to."

"Are you trying to protect me?" she asked, and he picked out the faint note in her voice that spelled danger if he said the wrong thing.

He hesitated, and went for the truth. "I can quite honestly say that I wouldn't dare to try!"

She flashed him a quick smile. "Stop trying to make me feel better about this."

"Is it working?"

She considered. "Yes."

- - - - -

The apartment building was well-kept, the sort of place, Stella considered, that would be at the upper end of her price range. It seemed to be trying to give the impression that it was more classy than it was with the abstractly patterned wallpaper, and wilting potted palms in the entrance-hall.

"This it?" Danny called back over his shoulder, down the hallway to where Stella was approaching more sedately with the building supervisor.

"What number?" she called back.

"Sixteen."

"Yep, that's the one." She caught up with him and they stood out of the way while the supervisor, a greasy-skinned, balding man in a leather jacket which probably had suited him better a decade or three ago, unlocked the door.

"So _how_ exactly did she die?" he asked for maybe the fourth time, the interest on his face almost ghoulish. She could feel his eyes now on the new bruise across her cheek as he reluctantly handed over the key, his clammy fingers brushing against her hand.

"Ongoing investigation, sir, we're not at liberty to discuss it," Stella snapped, her patience wearing thin after enduring a round of routine questioning and a ride with him in the elevator. "If we have any more questions we'll be in touch." She closed the apartment door firmly, cutting him off before he could say anything else, and looked around. She was busy disassociating herself again from the case. Later she could think about Grace, and whether she could have acted differently, but for now she bundled up all those distracting thoughts and buried them, somewhere deep inside her mind.

"You know what he reminded me of?" Danny was asking, answering himself without waiting for a reply. "Like a cockroach, in that shiny leather coat. Couldn't remember specifically ever speakin' to her, but wantin' to know all the details of how she died. I hate guys like him, give me the creeps."

Stella was only half listening, already busy pulling on a pair of gloves. "Notice anything – odd – about this place?" she asked.

"Not really," Danny said. "It's pretty neat."

"More than that, it's immaculate, look at it." There was nothing out of place on the floor, no thin layer of dust on tables and the tops of bookcases, not even any tidily placed odds and ends. The walls were white and the carpet was pale pink; both colours to hold any dirt, except there wasn't any.

"She was a cleanness freak, all right," Danny commented.

Stella frowned slightly in disagreement. "This place doesn't even look lived in, but if no one did live here then there should be some dust at least, cobwebs, that kind of thing." She found the kitchen area and began inspecting the surfaces for any evidence that they had ever been used for cooking.

"Stell, come take a look at this."

She found Danny busy opening the drawers of the writing desk in the main room. "What have you found?"

"Nothin'."

"Well, why did you – "

"No, I mean _literally_ nothin'."

Stella crossed the room in a few steps and stared down into the empty drawers, then turned to open a nearby cupboard. Its shelves were devoid of any content whatsoever, even dust. She met Danny's eyes, the same incredulousness in both of them. Without a word they began to open everything that would open – bedside cabinet, drawer beneath the dining table, refrigerator. Crockery and glasses were in a cupboard fixed on a wall in the kitchen, cutlery was in the cutlery drawer, newly polished pots and pans in another cupboard beside the sink, but everywhere else they looked they found exactly the same thing. Nothing at all.

"Who do you think did all this?" Danny asked, finally. "Grace Ellison, or someone else?"

Stella shrugged. "I've no idea. But there's nothing personal here at all. No letters, photographs, documents, jewellery – not even a shopping list. We're going to have to process this whole place from top to bottom, see if whoever cleaned out missed anything."

Danny sighed. "Figured you were gonna say that."

"It's not as if you have anything better to do, is it?"

- - - - -

When her phone rang, she was surprised to notice that over an hour had gone by. She had just flipped over the mattress on the bed, checking for any slits, possibly sewn up, inside which anything could be hidden. "Bonasera."

"It's Mac. Where are you?"

"Still at Grace Ellison's apartment. Someone's already gone over this place with a fine-tooth comb, Mac. It's empty."

She could almost hear his full attention snap onto her. "How'd you mean?"

"Danny and I have turned this place from top to bottom. Shaken through all the books, moved the furniture, looked under all the carpets. There's no papers, no food, no clothes – nothing."

"Fingerprints?" His tone let her know that he already knew the answer.

"All surfaces wiped down."

Danny called out to her from another room. "Stell, you have to see this."

"I've got to go. Meet you back at the lab."

"Take care." She nodded although he couldn't see her.

"I'm in the kitchen," Danny called as she hung up and opened the door of the bedroom.

"What've you found?" she asked.

In reply, he handed her a black light, and a pair of the orange Perspex shades. "Take a look."

"At what?"

"Take your pick."

She clicked the black light on. "Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me."

He grinned at her surprise. "Told ya that you had to see this."

The entire floor glowed under the black light. It showed the unmistakable signs of being scrubbed with bleach, every inch of it. As did all of the surface tops, and even the oven. She turned the black light off again and tapped it thoughtfully against her knee. "Right. We need to find out who emptied this place. We'll have to do a canvass of this floor, someone might have noticed something, and we can send the security tapes from downstairs to Adam."

"Surely the super would have noticed someone removing an apartment's worth of stuff?" Danny asked. "I mean, we asked him if he'd noticed anything out of the ordinary."

Stella shrugged. "Maybe he just forgot. Or couldn't be bothered to tell us."

"Or maybe…" he trailed off.

"What?" Stella prompted him.

He shrugged. "What if most of the stuff wasn't actually taken out of the building? I mean, if you wanted to get rid of a load of stuff like this, what would be the easiest way to do it?"

"Burn it?" Stella suggested.

"Exactly. Obviously not in here because the smoke detectors would've gone haywire, and even Cinderella or whoever wouldn't be able to clean up well enough to disguise that much mess. I'm thinking rooftop?"

"_Cinderella_?"

"Like I said, her or whoever. You comin'?"

Stella picked her camera off the floor and swung the strap over her shoulder, locking the door behind her and following Danny, who had charged on ahead with his usual boundless energy, and enthusiasm to be moving. She reached the elevator, which he was already standing inside of, jabbing the button to hold the door open for her.

"Nice bruise you're gettin' there," he commented. "What exactly happened in the subway? You didn't say."

"I'll tell you later," she replied, shortly. Then thought about it. "Actually, just ask Flack."

He picked up on the impression that a change of subject would be good, but couldn't think of one immediately, and instead squinted at his reflection in the mirrors covering each wall. The elevator doors chimed as they opened. "We're here."

"Yeah, I noticed."

They crossed the floor and up the short flight of stairs, opened the door to the roof, walked around the back of the hut-like structure which housed the door. A large metal drum, probably originally used to contain oil, stood upright, rusted and weathered, clearly a longstanding architectural feature. Stella snapped a photograph before pushing off its makeshift lid, a square of equally weather-beaten chipboard weighted down with three battered bricks.

She took another photograph of the soot-blackened interior, the foot or more of thick, tightly compressed ash. She could make out scraps of severely singed paper, black half-molten scraps of what had once probably been synthetic fabric. "I'd hazard a guess that we've got most of our missing contents right here. Everything flammable, anyway."

"We're going to have to process _all _this crap?" Danny muttered, eying it disdainfully. "It's gonna take us 'til next century, at least."

"Afraid so. There might be something important in it that's still unburnt, we'll know when we get it back to the lab and sift through it." She laughed at the clear disgust on his face.

"Stella, do you – "

"Dan, stop whining. I'm going to phone – "

His voice was suddenly more serious. "No, Stell, listen. Can you hear that?"

"What?" She strained her ears, and after a second could hear a faint beeping. An electrical noise. "Where's it coming from?"

"Over that way, I think." She followed his lead, the sound becoming gradually louder as they moved across the rooftop, further away from the door. About ten metres away there was an untidily-stacked and partly collapsing pile of rotting wooden crates, sheets of cracked and filthy fibreglass, disintegrating cardboard boxes squashed flat, even something that looked as if it had used to be a dining table. Apparently this area of the roof was used as a skip by residents. The beeping was louder now, the source presumably hidden amidst the junk.

"See anything?" she asked.

Danny crouched down, an unobstructed line-of-sight between him and the metal drum. "Found it."

"Where? What is it?" He indicated the spot to her, and her eyes widened in comprehension. She snapped a quick photograph, and he pulled the silver object out from the shadow of a wooden slat, and turned it over. A couple of disturbed woodlice scurried away into darkness.

The icon on the camcorder's screen warned that it was nearly out of memory space, but the red light in the corner of the screen was still flashing. Still recording.

Recording them.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thank you all very much for all the reviews and for ****those who've added this story to alerts or favourites!**** Please do continue, I always enjoy hearing your thoughts, and will reply. And will try to update faster! **

**Thank you to lily moonlight for the read-through.**

* * *

The black SUV pushed slowly through the even slower-moving stream of traffic. Danny was driving, which meant that they were managing to travel faster than they would have otherwise; somehow he was managing to manoeuvre the unwieldy vehicle into gaps which looked far too small for it, instinctively judging which lane of traffic was about to start moving faster and squeezing in to join it.

Stella had just got off the phone with Mac, and now sat silently in the passenger seat. She gazed absently into store fronts as they fought their way past, and at the pedestrians, and at the other cars. The knowledge of the camera they were carrying in the trunk was pervading her thoughts, the knowledge that someone could have been watching them. It made her uneasy, that in a city of millions of people she had no idea who might have been receiving video feed of them, and for what purpose. There were people everywhere, who so often didn't notice those needing help, but to be specifically _noticed_ was a different thing altogether.

In the wing mirror she watched the traffic behind them and in adjacent lanes; yellow taxis all alike, a black car with a massive gash in its paintwork, a green car with a pair of bicycles strapped to the roof struggling to remain ahead of its follower, a red motorbike behind them, effortlessly slipping through the larger, ungainly cars, its engine revving loudly to taunt those it overtook.

She watched for it to pass them too, but it seemed to have grown bored of the game, content for now to dawdle. A gap opened up in the neighbouring lane, but it didn't leave its position, remaining directly behind them.

Any other day, she might have ignored it, told herself that she was being paranoid. But today, right now, the thought of being watched was preying on her mind. And she'd rather know than not.

"Danny," she said. "Turn left please, just up ahead."

He caught the edge to her voice and turned the indicator on, heading off the street they should have kept on following.

"What's going on?" he asked. "We're taking the long way back?"

Stella glanced at the mirror again. "Now go right."

"Why?" He looked at her, confused, but indicated again anyway.

She glanced again in her mirror. The motorbike was still there. "I think we're being followed."

She saw him look into the rear-view mirror as they turned, sizing the situation up. "The motorbike, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"How long?"

"A few minutes, maybe more. I only just started noticing it."

"Nice bike."

Danny turned again. So did the bike. Wondering why she hadn't thought of it before, Stella took out her cell phone, snapped a photo of its reflection. The biker was wearing leathers, a blacked-out visor on his helmet. Nothing to distinguish him.

"Do you know what model the bike is?" she asked. "When you've finished admiring it."

He looked in his mirror again. "Honda make. I don't know what model, but I'll recognise it if I see it again."

She texted the photo to Adam, attaching an explanation.

"He's not being exactly subtle," Danny commented. "Right behind us, immediately making the same turns." He switched on his left indicator. Behind them, so did the motorbike. He turned the indicator off, and the bike's light also flicked out. "Playing copycat."

Stella didn't take her eyes from the mirror. With the black helmet, the biker was completely anonymous. She watched him uneasily. "He wants us to know we're being followed."

"Should I keep on, or should we stop?"

She looked at Danny's face, eager for action, and made a quick decision. "Stop."

He jammed down on the brake, the SUV screeching to an emergency halt. The two of them flung open their doors, jumped out, weapons already in their hands as they ran towards him, aiming at him, shouting for him to stop, but in a road full of civilians the words and the guns were only empty threats. The biker flung the bike around on a tight turn, foot scraping the tarmac as a pivot, roaring off amidst a cacophony of furious car horns as they reached the spot where he had been, marked now by the swirl of tyre treads.

They could only watch as it disappeared.

- - - - -

"Where's Mac?" Stella asked, walking into the AV lab. After reporting the incident, the remainder of the drive to the labs had been silent. Danny had been seething about not stopping their tailer, and she had been trying fervently to make sense of what was going on, churning everything she knew in her mind, but still unable to come up with answers.

Adam thought, and then shrugged. "Autopsy… I think. He said something about that." He swivelled his chair to gesture to one of the computer screens. "I've been working on the picture you sent me of the biker guy, nothing to distinguish him. I think the model is a CB900F Hornet." The picture on the screen was identical to the one which had followed them, and she nodded for him to carry on. "I'm working on finding it. It's quite a new model, so there probably aren't too many of them around, but without the plate number it's going to be hard to trace."

She had expected that, really, but it was still a disappointment. "Ok, thanks. Here, have a present in the meantime."

Adam accepted the cardboard box, weighing it in his hands. "Security tapes?"

"Yep. And a camcorder."

"What's on the camcorder?"

She grinned. "Work your magic on it, and then tell me."

"Is it the one from the roof?" he asked, slightly hesitantly.

She nodded, becoming serious again. "Mac tell you?"

"Yeah, when he was dropping off security tapes from the subway station." He looked uncomfortably apologetic. "He said I had to show him first what I find on them, sorry."

"Don't worry," she reassured him. "When you get to the camcorder, can you find out if the video feed was being uploaded anywhere, and if so, trace it?"

"Ok… and what am I looking for on the security tapes?"

"They're of Grace Ellison's apartment building, the front and side entrances. We think that some of her stuff might have been removed."

"Might have been?"

"Yep."

"So you want me to look for someone who might not be there? You sound like Mac."

She smiled again. "Well, whoever went through her place would have had to have been spotted by the cameras."

"But… if they aren't obviously carrying anything, I might not realise who they are."

"Yeah, it's a long shot, sorry."

"I'll work on it. I suppose you'll want to know when Grace left the building, too?"

"Thanks, Adam, that'll be great. I'll catch up with you later." She headed out, and turned in the corridor, to see the grin on his face morph instantly into a frown of complete concentration as he began to lift tapes out of the box, already unaware of his surroundings and that he was being watched. She smiled and headed for the elevator, as Mac appeared around a corner, walking towards her.

"Hey," she greeted him, stopping and waiting in front of the elevator doors for him to arrive. "I was just looking for you. Adam said you've already been to autopsy?"

He reached around her and pressed the call button. "Not yet, Sid hadn't finished. I'm headed there now, are you coming?"

"Yeah, sure."

The metal doors slid open; they stepped inside and began the journey down.

"This case is already getting weird," Stella said. "I mean, someone's method of murder is to get a _crowd_ to push someone in front of a train, the victim's place is sterilised, and Danny and I are followed in a way that shouts out 'look at me, I'm tailing you'? What does that say to you?"

Mac shrugged slightly. "I don't draw conclusions this early. We haven't got all the evidence in yet, so only a few ideas so far."

"Feel like sharing?" she asked.

"Well, the obvious. Someone wanted to leave no trace of her life, or maybe no trace of something or someone else in that apartment."

"Yeah, that makes sense. What's your theory on the tail, though? That's what I can't work out."

He shrugged his shoulders again. "Perhaps trying to get you and Danny to reveal if you'd managed to find anything?"

"By following us on a _motorbike_?" She shook her head. "No, there has to be more to it than that."

"Of course, if we actually did know what someone was trying to cover-up, everything might make more sense."

She sighed, pushing her hair back from her face. "Let's hope that Sid can give us something, then. We're just running in circles here."

The doors opened, and they walked into the steel surfaces of the morgue. Sid was standing next to the table, the autopsy clearly only just finished, as he was carefully arranging instruments on their tray with absolute precision. He waved them over, and Stella's eyes were drawn to Grace's body as she approached. A thought began to tease at the back of her mind, a thought to do with Grace, and the train, refusing to fully form as she chased it.

"You're just in time," Sid told them, abandoning his organising. "I'm sorry I had to turn you away earlier, Mac, but there's no sense knowing half the story, and then having to come back later for the rest. Much better to hear everything at once."

"Do you have anything for us?" Mac asked.

Sid considered for a second. "By 'anything', I take it you want me to tell you something unusual about her? Aside from 'she was hit by a train'?"

"Yeah, that'd be useful."

"Well, official COD is a broken neck, but if that didn't kill her, the massive internal bleeding would have. Punctured lungs, ruptured spleen, nearly every bone in her body broken." He paused, maybe for dramatic effect. "She was hit by a train."

Mac sighed, very slightly. "Is there anything you found which we didn't already know?"

"Well, that depends on what you already know, of course." Sid glanced at Mac's raised eyebrows, and hastened on. "She was actually in very good health. One thing I did find, though, during the examination. Ms Ellison had an abortion, sometime between a month and two months ago, although I'd suggest closer to a month." He paused for a second. "Also, she may have been in a hurry when she left, as she hadn't eaten anything this morning. I did send her stomach contents up for analysis, but she barely had any food in her. Of course, that could also mean that she just wasn't a breakfast person."

Mac opened his mouth out of habit to ask Stella whether there had been any evidence of a boyfriend, or of her having left in a hurry, and then remembered that no, of course there hadn't been. "Anything else?" he asked.

Sid shook his head. "I'm afraid that's all. The only really unusual thing about this poor woman, physically, seems to have been her manner of demise."

Mac sighed, rubbing his hand across his eyes. "Alright, thanks Sid." He turned to Stella, realising that she had been silent throughout the discussion, unusually for her. "Stell?"

"Yeah," she replied, absently. Still staring at Grace's closed eyelids, forehead slightly creased in a frown of concentration. "I was just… trying to remember. If she said anything else." She shook her head, her expression clearing. "I don't know, it'll probably come back. Thanks, Sid."

"You're welcome."

Stella's thoughts were still slightly absent as she followed Mac out through the doors. More and more a feeling was nagging at her, that there had been something which could be important, only she had forgotten it. She stored it in the back of her mind, to keep ticking over until she could pull it out and examine it later.

"Where's Danny?" Mac asked, once they were back in the elevator.

She smiled, wryly. "Sifting through ashes, and that's where I'm about to go too. Do you want to join the party?"

"It's tempting, but I have to pass on that one. I've still got her clothes to process, I've just been through her purse."

"What was in it?" Stella asked. "Anything useful?"

"Six items." He counted off on his fingers. "Wallet, with driving license, three credit cards, and sixty-seven dollars exactly in bills and coins. Apartment key, a dry-cleaning ticket, unused check book, half empty pack of chewing gum, red lipstick. If I've forgotten anything, I'll tell you later. Everything was covered with fingerprints, and nearly all of them came straight back to Grace, but there're some which are unknown; they're running through AFIS right now."

She nodded. "Which items were the other prints on?"

"All from the check book. Someone could have used it to get her address from, or they could have been hoping to get a copy of her signature. Of course, since it's new, they could just as easily be from whoever put it in the envelope at her bank to send to her." He glanced at his watch. "AFIS might have finished by now, I'll go and check while you look through a pile of soot."

"Must be nice, being the boss and getting the clean jobs. Do you want to swap?"

He half-smiled. "You'd abuse your power. You've already put Danny on the soot while you got to go down to autopsy."

They stepped out into the corridor, and his cell rang before she could retort. He checked the screen, and then stepped away from her without a word to answer it. She left him pushing open his office door, and went to find Danny.

She was still thinking hard, thoughts focused on those last few seconds, as the train had roared in. Suddenly, she realised what it was that she had noticed, and then forgotten in the chaos. Grace had still been talking, but the sound had been completely overpowered by the engine. Her lips had moved. Unknowingly, Stella's steps slowed to a stop as the moment replayed in her mind, as if she herself was a camera, zooming in, rewinding, playing. She closed her eyes. Focus. Focus. Think. She could see Grace's lips, shaping lost sounds, words that were eluding her, but she replayed, again, and was nearly there to understanding. Nearly there. Think…

"Stella?"

The voice snapped her concentration, the fragment of the thought that had been spinning together immediately unravelling and spiralling away. In a rush of irritation her eyes flew open to see Danny staring at her, his expression somewhere between confusion and concern. Without noticing, she had reached the layout room and had been standing in the doorway, a few steps from where two tables had been shoved together and black soot and ashes spread out across most of the surface.

"What?"

"Never mind."

She felt the momentary annoyance and frustration ebb away within her. "Sorry. I was just trying to work out… It'll come back." She crossed the room, where a lab coat hung from a hook next to one of the windows, and looked down absently at the street as she pulled it on.

Her eyes were caught, and held. She didn't turn towards him as she spoke. "Danny."

Her voice was commanding, and he came towards her immediately. "See something?"

"Do _you_?"

He looked down at the traffic, moving and unmoving. At the red motorbike, stationary on the opposite kerb while the rider sat astride it, stock-still, helmeted head tilted up, towards their window, although the two of them would be invisible from street level. He was certain, as was she. "That's the same one."

Stella grabbed her cell to call security downstairs, but, as if it had been waiting for them to look out, the rider suddenly kick-started the bike into life and tore away, joining the flow of cars, speeding through gaps between them. And was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Thank you very much, as always, to everyone reviewing and adding this to alerts and favourites. I really appreciate it, and please do continue! I love hearing any views on this, and always reply.  
**

**Thanks to lily moonlight, for reading through, making suggestions, and restoring my self-confidence.**

* * *

Evening was falling, a bluish-purple dusk settling over the city, blurring outlines of distant buildings, lying like a cloud of smoke in alleyways. One alley in particular, where it wrapped gently around a woman who was oblivious to the cooling air, and to the dew condensing on her cold skin and in the folds of her clothes.

Lindsay and Hawkes were setting up the crime scene lights.

The alley contained several dumpsters, and piles of miscellaneous pallets, crates, and cardboard boxes from the back doors of stores and restaurants. The woman was sitting slumped against one of the dumpsters, her head resting against the brick of the high wall, eyes closed. There was dirt on her grey trousers, and on her pale blue blouse.

Angell strolled over, sliding her cell into her pocket, as Hawkes flicked the lights on, their harsh beams now picking out the woman's features. He and Lindsay crouched down next to her, Lindsay adding the camera's flash to the glare. He waited until she was finished before touching the body. "Rigor's fully advanced," he commented. "No visible injuries." He inserted the liver probe, waited for the reading to stabilise, and did the calculation in his head. "It's half seven now, I'd put her TOD at about six this morning, give or take half an hour or so. Sid can give us a more accurate time when we get her back to the morgue."

"How can a body lie in an alley all day, and no one notice?" Lindsay asked.

Hawkes shrugged resignedly. "I guess everyone just walked on by."

Maybe it was excusable – just – for the body of the woman not to have been noticed. The narrow alley ran East to West, and was at all times deep in shadow, apart from at high noon.

"Who found her?" Lindsay asked Angell, who held up her hands and shrugged.

"Anonymous 911 call," she said. "It came from a disposable cell phone, about an hour ago."

Lindsay nodded, stepping out of the circle of light and into the gloom beyond and beginning to scan the ground, her flashlight lit, for any out-of-place footprints, anything that might have been dropped. After twelve hours, she wasn't optimistic.

"That's odd," Hawkes muttered, mostly to himself.

She turned back to him. "What is?"

He held up the woman's wallet. "Got an ID for her. Jennifer Philips. Age 30."

"What's odd about that?" she questioned.

He shook his head quickly. "No, her ID's not odd. But there's no cash in her wallet, and the wallet wasn't even in her pocket, just shoved under her arm. Looks like a robbery. Could be motive."

"What's the cause of death?" asked Angell.

"I haven't got anything yet," Hawkes said. "It's any one of a dozen possibilities. But look at this." He indicated one of Jennifer's hands, displaying the palm to the two women, as they approached. Lindsay returned to her previous task once she'd seen, but Angell crouched down to have a better look. Jennifer's fingertips were red, the skin raised slightly, the rash creeping down past the joint. "It's definitely caused by a chemical of some sort," he said. "Possibly an allergic reaction to something she touched."

"Do you think it's linked to her death?" Angell asked, interestedly.

Hawkes shrugged, bent over the body to examine it more closely. "Could be. Some poisons can be absorbed in fatal doses through the skin. I don't think we can rule anything out right now."

Lindsay half-listened to the two of them, busy as she was sweeping through the alley, racing against the fading light. For now her flashlight was enough, but soon she would have to fetch one of the large spotlights, and that would be annoyingly slow to drag around. Better to get evidence collection done before it came to that, but she couldn't see anything that was unequivocally evidence. The dusk was encroaching while she worked. Shadows swept around her as she moved, darkness drifting to collect into pools around and under dumpsters, in corners of the thresholds of the tightly sealed doors, and along the joins between floor and wall.

She glanced behind her to see Angell and Hawkes picking up boxes of evidence, presumably to carry them back to the car. He saw her looking and waved to her, calling out, "We're just beginning to move the evidence. Can you keep an eye on the scene for a couple of minutes?" She raised a hand in acknowledgement, and watched them meld into the gloom. She turned away again, not wanting to venture further and leave the body unattended, but still wanting to make sure that she wasn't overlooking some vital clue from where she stood.

A stack of crates slumped outwards from near a doorway, and as she walked across towards the other wall to see around them, she became aware of a noise, a stealthy rustling. Coming from behind them.

"Is there anyone there?" she called. The noise stopped.

Lindsay snatched a glance behind her, and saw that there was still no sign of Hawkes or Angell in the pool of light. Again there was a rustle, hastily suppressed, and her vague uneasiness compressed to a hard knot of certainty – there was someone behind the crates, someone trying to remain unnoticed. And now, due to her hasty calling-out, they would know that she was aware of them.

She transferred the flashlight to her left hand, and gently slid her gun from its holder. She hovered for a second in indecision, hoping desperately that the other two would return, her brain clinging strictly to procedure, which stated that she needed backup, but there wasn't any. The initiative was only with her.

Rustle. Rustle. The beam of the flashlight was on the ground near her feet. She didn't want to shine it directly at the crates, didn't want to do anything that would break this fragile stalemate she was trapped in.

Rustle.

She took a step forwards.

A box which had teetered precariously on the edge of the pile, suddenly slipped or was dislodged, falling with a crash to the ground. She jerked instinctively, weapon and flashlight raised, aiming wildly, as a shadow dislodged itself from the indistinct shapes and launched itself towards her, into the narrow band of light –

It was a cat. Just a cat.

Her shoulders slumped as her tensed muscles relaxed and she took a few steadying breaths, heart rate slowing, mentally chiding herself. A trained police officer, and she had been frightened by a black cat, which was now purring and rubbing itself against her leg. Gun still in her hand, she shone the flashlight directly onto the crates, seeing the gaps between them, satisfying herself that there could be no one behind them, and then walking slowly and silently to the other side of them to confirm. A black plastic bag was trapped at the base of the pile, probably what the cat had nosed to cause the rustling. She stepped back so that she could see the crime scene lights, laughing slightly to herself, replacing her piece. The cat had jumped up onto the pile again, level with her waist, and she absently paused for a second and stroked it, its fur feeling strange to her through the latex barrier of her glove.

"Hey, Lindsay?" Hawkes stepped into the lit crime scene, peering in her direction, and she left the cat behind and hastened towards him. "The body's being removed now."

"Ok," she said, slightly absently.

"Did you find anything down there?" he asked.

She too reached the flood-lit area. "No, nothing," she said, deciding to preserve her dignity by not mentioning her false alarm over the cat. She replaced the flashlight in her pocket, and turned to help with packing up the equipment.

"Lindsay…" Angell was suddenly staring at her.

"What?" she asked, the look and tone stirring a feeling of anxiety, to flutter inside her.

"Your hand…"

She looked down at her still-gloved hands, and her eyes widened.

Her right palm was smeared red, gleaming stickily in the bright light. She held it out in confusion, and stood there watching as Hawkes swabbed it, testing it, confirming it. Blood.

"Do you know what it's from?" he asked.

It was a ridiculous, and even repulsive, idea, that she'd touched a blood-covered surface without noticing it. But somehow, she had. She pulled the gloves from her hands and dropped them into the evidence bag which Hawkes held out, shaking her head in answer to his question, and already trying to think of possible explanations. "I don't know where it's from. I didn't see anything…"

- - - - -

The dusk pressed against the windows of the crime lab, repelled for now by the glass, and the lights. Stella stared out at it, standing by the coffee machine as it gurgled to life, reluctantly spurting coffee into the waiting cup. The brightly lit labs only made the evening sky outside appear darker.

Not looking where she was going, she stepped into the corridor, and nearly collided with Mac, who stepped back sharply, out of range of the coffee slopping from its cup, some of which soaked into the cuff of her lab coat. "Ashes aren't keeping you awake enough?" he asked her.

She pulled a wry face. "It's not even funny, Mac. We've been picking through them for hours now."

"Have you found anything?"

She raised an eyebrow. "We're still sorting out 'paper', 'cloth' and 'miscellaneous', don't expect miracles quite yet."

She almost told him about having seen the motorbike again, and then didn't. They didn't know that it was the same one, anyway. And it hadn't done anything, just idled on the side of a busy road. And Mac was busy now, they all were. There would be plenty of time to tell him later, and in the meantime she and Danny were more than capable of handling whatever was going on.

Unaware of her brief internal struggle, he was smiling, slightly teasingly. "Speaking of evidence, you've got some on your forehead."

His hand gently brushed away the smudge of dark soot that must have transferred when she had absently pushed her hair back. For a brief second she thought about how she would kill Danny, who could have hardly avoided noticing it, but the thought drifted away unmissed. "New forensic technique," she said, grinning. He laughed.

"Very scientific."

"And yet another reason why I'm heartily tired of ashes."

A clock in a nearby room chimed the hour. "I need to go and find Adam," Mac said, recalling them both to the situation at hand.

"I'll let you know if we find anything," she told him.

"Good luck." He strolled away, and Stella felt a twinge of guilt at lying to him by omission. But what was there to say? Someone on a red motorbike had happened to park for a few minutes across the street from their building? Put like that it seemed a silly thing to worry over, although she couldn't quite quell the unease she felt as she passed empty rooms, left abandoned to the night's shadows.

She shook her head to clear it and walked slowly back towards the layout room, the loud click of her heels the solitary noise in the deserted corridor, cooling cup of coffee almost forgotten in her hand.

- - - - -

Adam was sat in front of four computer screens, occasionally swivelling his chair around to get a better view of a particular one. Currently, he was watching a sped-up feed of everyone who had been in or out of Grace Ellison's apartment block that day. Everyone was uniformly unsuspicious looking. Even Grace Ellison herself, when he'd pinpointed her as having left at about five a.m., wasn't carrying anything other than the purse slung over her shoulder, and although her movements were fast, they weren't unnaturally so. If he hadn't known who she was, he would have just assumed that either she was a habitually fast walker, or that she was cutting it fine in getting to work.

Certainly not that three hours later, she would be apparently running for her life.

The main trouble that he was facing was that almost _everyone_ leaving the building had been carrying a bag of some description, and the security camera seemed to have been placed on purpose at an angle that failed to pick up nearly everyone's faces. And it only recorded in black and white. After several hours spent staring at the screen, he half expected to see the whole world in monochrome when he looked away from it. Even so, he had nine suspects, men who had been both into and out of the building in the time between Grace's exit, and Stella and Danny's entrance. Three of them had gone in and out carrying nothing, two had come in carrying nothing and exited with bags, one a sports holdall and the other a laptop case, and the other four had entered _and _exited with bags, three laptop cases and one briefcase. But he highly doubted that he would be conclusively be able to identify them. The camera seemed to be designed more as a deterrent than as a serious method of catching anyone.

He was faring no better with the camcorder. Whoever had set it up had easily walked around the edge of its line of sight after turning it on, leaving him with ten seconds of the tip of a shadow moving across the roof, and then an hour and a half's worth of film of the metal drum and a couple of inquiring pigeons, before Danny and Stella appeared. He couldn't even use it to make a time line, as about halfway in, it had apparently stopped filming, and then started again an indeterminate amount of time later. With no time stamps.

There hadn't even been any sort of uplink on the camera, no way that the images had been transferred anywhere else. Either whoever had set it up hadn't thought that it might be discovered, or else… well, he didn't know what else. "What were you supposed to do?" he asked it, pleadingly. He put his elbows on the desk, and stared hard at the monitor, as if the answers were written somewhere on the screen in pixel-high letters. All that it came down to was that someone had made the crime lab a gift of a brand new camcorder, and an hour and a half of a recording of a rooftop.

He groaned in abject frustration, dropping his head and clenching his fingers into fists in his hair. "_Stupid_ computer," he muttered. "Just _tell_ me what's going on!"

"Voice recognition software?" someone asked dryly.

He jerked upright, and spun his chair through a half-turn, halting himself with a foot against the floor. Mac was leaning against the doorframe, eyebrows raised, surveying him with what appeared to be amusement. He felt his face flush. "No, I was just… I mean…"

Mac strolled forwards into the lab, surveying the screens. He pointed to the one on the left side, grey frozen people packed together. "Is that the tape from the subway station I gave you earlier?"

"Uh, yeah. I was looking at that a minute ago. I found who pushed her."

Mac nodded, his face keenly interested. "Really?"

Adam gulped, suddenly regretting his over-optimistic wording. "Well. Yes, but no." In response to Mac's raised eyebrows, he hastened on. "I mean, I found the guy on the tape, but… Well, it's here." He played the clip that he had isolated.

The crowd stood still, a uniform monochromatic mass all looking in the same direction, all avoiding eye contact with each other. Suddenly, a grainy, black-and-white man wearing a baseball cap shoved against the people standing next to him, and a wave of movement immediately rocked forwards. A moment ago he had been barely indistinguishable from anyone else. The man strained his neck up, possibly checking to see what he had accomplished, and then turned, forcing his way through resisting people behind him, and off the screen. The entire incident had taken less than thirty seconds.

"Can you clean the image up at all?" Mac asked, without much hope of it. He knew that if it had been possible, Adam would have already thought to do it.

Sure enough, Adam's reply was negative. "This _is _cleaned up. If I zoom in any further you can only see a mess of pixels."

"What about a better angle of him?"

Adam shook his head again, nervous in the face of his failure. "Sorry, this is all we've got. Well, actually, I managed to get the logo from his hat and run it through recognition software, but it's just the Mets logo. I mean, thousands of people have it."

"Do you have anything from the tapes of her apartment?"

"Not yet. I've got some suspects, but I'm still working on it." He immediately wanted to bite his words back again, for the second time in the conversation, but again it was too late.

"Good. Call me when you get something, ok?"

"Sure…" Adam trailed off dismally as Mac left. He waited until he was out of earshot, and groaned. "Why didn't you just _tell_ him you've got no leads from those tapes either, you idiot?" he muttered to himself. Now he would _have_ to find something, because Mac would be expecting him to. He began to rewind the film again, grey clockwork figures walking backwards, jerkily. Grace appeared again, and he stopped the tape to let her walk forwards from the elevator towards the exit, zooming in, viewing frame by frame.

"Please, tell me something!" he begged her desperately. Talking to a picture. Probably no less useless than talking to a machine.

He stared at her, caught and trapped on the film, until all the shades of grey began to blur together, and he had to rub his eyes to clear them. He looked again, and all at once a smile began to spread over his face as he realised exactly what he was seeing.

Maybe she _was_ telling him something.


End file.
